An undis­closed source at a news site called “The Instance” claims to have insider infor­ma­tion with regards to the War­craft movie adap­ta­tion. At such an early stage any infor­ma­tion like this is most cer­tainly false and this has been clas­si­fied as a rumor — which is giv­ing this far too much credit. Im not even sure actors are involved in the process yet — firstly a direc­tor needs to be named.

If you see this infor­ma­tion repeated any­where, know that this was an April Fool’s joke/prank. Peo­ple have been talk­ing about these details as if they were facts and I am dis­pelling them now.

“I’m a per­sonal assis­tant for a very well-known actor, and I’ve just handed him a com­plete script treat­ment for the new War­craft movie. It’s going to be called “War­craft: The Fall of Quel’Thalas”, and it looks like it may be the first of a pro­posed tril­ogy, with a sec­ond part called “The Cav­erns Of Time” and the final install­ment called “The Bat­tle Of Mount Hyjal”.”

With the suc­cess of LotR though, every­thing seems des­tined for a tril­ogy these days.

Come May 8th 2006 Bliz­zard Enter­tain­ment made an announce­ment that their War­craft franchise/universe would be adapted into a sil­ver screen fea­ture length movie. Leg­endary Pic­tures, a rel­a­tively new pro­duc­tion com­pany behind Super­man Returns and Bat­man Begins, are to develop the live action film with dis­tri­b­u­tion likely falling  to Warner Broth­ers as part of an exist­ing agreement.

Paul Sams, chief oper­at­ing offi­cer for Bliz­zard had this to say, “We searched for a very long time to find the right stu­dio for devel­op­ing a movie based on one of our game uni­verses. Many com­pa­nies approached us in the past, but it wasn’t until we met with Leg­endary Pic­tures that we felt we’d found the per­fect part­ner. They clearly share our high stan­dards for cre­ative devel­op­ment, and because they under­stand the vision that we’ve always strived for with our War­craft games, we feel there isn’t a bet­ter stu­dio out there for bring­ing the War­craft story to film.”

Whilst Thomas Tul, CEO of leg­endary pic­tures stated,  “One of our goals at Leg­endary Pic­tures has been to bring heroic sto­ries to life in ground­break­ing ways, and it’s inspir­ing to work with a com­pany such as Bliz­zard that takes that approach with each of its prod­ucts. The War­craft uni­verse is pos­sessed of such a rich mythol­ogy and, as such, serves as an ideal plat­form as we go about trans­lat­ing that uni­verse into what we intend to be a major event film.”

With regards to the adap­ta­tion, Leg­endary Pic­tures’ Jon Jashni said, “We are intend­ing to approach this as we would the adap­ta­tion of a best-selling novel: respect the essence of all that it is but also build upon that fer­tile base while trans­lat­ing it into a new medium.”

The offi­cial announce­ment can be found here.

As of the moment IMDB has penned a 2008 release date which is of course sub­ject to change.

The first and most impor­tant thing to note: this video is fan made and is not in any way an offi­cial movie pro­duc­tion. Phil­an­thropy is a well organ­ised live action effort to pro­duce an MGS movie and this, the trailer for which, is the fruit of their offerings.

I have taken the time to include this movie here because it illus­trates the poten­tial that an offi­cial Hol­ly­wood live action adap­ta­tion can achieve, when such high stan­dard fan-made work can be cre­ated with the lowli­est of budgets.

“After a full year’s efforts, a year full of patience and growth, The Hive Divi­sion is happy to share with all of our Inter­net friends the first trailer of Phil­an­thropy. The project has been a part of our lives for more than four years, and in those four years, the aims that it rep­re­sents and the dreams that it embod­ies have grown along­side us.
This trailer is an exam­ple of what we want to share with all of you who have fol­lowed us until now, you who have aspired as we have, as film­mak­ers, as videogame fans, or as indi­vid­u­als fas­ci­nated by the poten­tial dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy offers to any­one with a strong idea and a will brave enough to fol­low it.”

8 months later, on 8th Feb­ru­ary 2007 Vari­ety reported that Colum­bia Pic­tures, owned by Sony Pic­tures Enter­tain­ment were “bring­ing hit vidgame fran­chise “Metal Gear Solid” to the bigscreen.”

With the announce­ment came the news of Michael De Luca’s inolv­ment as a pro­ducer — pre­vi­ous works have included Amer­i­can His­tory X, Blade II and Mag­no­lia. Video game cre­ator Hideo Kojima will act as exec­u­tive pro­ducer, over­see­ing the project.

Yair Lan­dau, Sony chair, con­firmed it was in the works fol­low­ing his keynote speech Thurs­day at the DICE vidgame con­fab in Las Vegas — to quote, “It’s a very cin­e­matic game, it really lends itself to movie telling. But the ques­tion is, ‘How do you trans­late Snake’s expe­ri­ence into a full arc that con­forms to what audi­ences expect on the large screen?”

Doug Bel­grad, an exec­u­tive involved with final­is­ing the deal (the other being Sam Dick­er­man) states that MGS is “loaded with well-developed, intrigu­ing char­ac­ters and one of the first games to ever use cin­e­matic tools in its sto­ry­telling.” The deal is sup­pos­edly near completion.

As it stands, the IMDB page pens a 2009 release date.

Firstly on April 28th in a pod­cast, then on May 10th 2006 at the last E3 expo Metal Gear Solid cre­ator (amidst rumors), Hideo Kojima, made the announce­ment that a feature-length film adap­ta­tion of the pop­u­lar series was in development:

“I have received many offers to adapt Metal Gear Solid. It has taken a long time, but we have finally set­tled on an arrange­ment. False facts aside, a movie project is under­way. I have final­ized a Class-A con­tract with a party in Hol­ly­wood.” Source.

Dur­ing this time rumors were abound that the atro­cious and piti­ful direc­tor Uwe Boll (Alone in the Dark, Postal) was some­how involved. At the announce­ment these rumors were quashed, Ger­man direc­tor Uwe Boll will not have any­thing to do with the project — “it’s impos­si­ble we’d ever do a movie with him”.

View the orig­i­nal arti­cle
An image ver­sion of this arti­cle, saved for pros­per­ity, can be found here.
Lis­ten to the orig­i­nal pod­cast here. (HIDECHAN! ラジオ　第53回 （06.04.28）)

IGN have posted an inter­view with Rod Fer­gus­son, Gears of War pro­ducer, reveal­ing a cou­ple of tid-bits about the movie deal:

IGN: Can you tell us much about the movie deal?

Rod Fer­gus­son: There isn’t much to say right now. What peo­ple need to take away is that scripts get optioned all the time in Hol­ly­wood and that by no means [indi­cates] that it’s absolutely going to hap­pen that the movie gets cre­ated. They take their option and they may decide to do noth­ing with that option.

IGN: So New Line has optioned the script?

Rod Fer­gus­son: They have, yeah. They have a writer, Stu­art Beat­tie, who wrote ‘Col­lat­eral’ and ‘Derailed’, and was a con­tribut­ing writer to the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies. And so he’s a big name script writer, and he’s already writ­ten a treatment.

On March 20th Vari­ety reported that New Line had picked up the fea­ture rights for Epic’s Gears of War. Stu­art Beat­tie, the mind behind Pirates of the Caribbean and Col­lat­eral, is said to be work­ing on the big screen adap­ta­tion of the game along­side pro­duc­ers Marty Bowen and Wyck God­frey work­ing under the moniker “Tem­ple Hill”.

Rumors sug­gest that with smooth video game and movie devel­op­ment Epic would look to make a simul­ta­ne­ous release of two new fea­tures to their lat­est franchise.

For those not in the know, Gears of War became the 4th biggest sell­ing game in 2006, is cur­rently the most pop­u­lar Xbox 360 online title and won game of the year at “Game Devel­op­ers Choice Awards and the Inter­ac­tive Achieve­ment Awards.”

Spe­cific sto­ry­lines are as of yet unknown, although Epic VP did state, “We wanted to make an enter­tain­ment prop­erty that’s not just for games but for other media.”

With script devel­op­ment will come the ten­ta­tive search for a direc­tor to spear-head the project. The par­ties involved are look­ing toward a 2009 release date, should things go smoothly.

For gamers, the pos­i­tive point to note is that lead game designer Cliff Bleszin­ski (we all know him as Cliffy B) will be exec­u­tive pro­ducer and “devel­op­ment con­sul­tant” to Epic.

“Our first and fore­most phi­los­o­phy is to do no harm, so we debated heav­ily the idea of doing a movie at all. […] But we feel we stacked the deck in our favor by work­ing with the best play­ers.” says Epic VP.

EDIT: Yahoo adds,

Screen­writer Beattie’s involve­ment with the project didn’t come over a high-priced meal on Sun­set Boule­vard, but with a sim­ple mes­sage sent over Xbox Live. Beat­tie told Reuters that while play­ing Gears of War one night, “This New Line exec Jeff Katz dropped me a mes­sage in my Xbox Live account say­ing, ‘If we bought the game you’re play­ing right now, would you write it?’ And this was back in Decem­ber. It shows you how on-the-ball New Line was. I’m going to write off my Xbox Live this year, accounting-wise.”

and again:

Beat­tie believes that if you tell a good story, audi­ences will respond, and he thinks the game’s set­ting and scope will help in that respect.

“For me, it’s a great, rich and unique world that I have never seen before, and it’s a genre that has only been hinted at in films like ‘Aliens,“‘ he said. “The epic sci-fi war movie has yet to be done, and that’s what ‘Gears’ is.”

Offi­cial Movie Announcement

Let’s see where this goes.

Anatael is back with a new incar­na­tion. He has spent the last cou­ple of months work­ing on a new Evan­ge­lion teaser trailer. As fan efforts typ­i­cally go, this is some­thing to behold. See if you can spot Asuka, Rei, etc. With­out fur­ther adieu: